Megan and Murray

10th International Istanbul Biennial: Nightcomers Screenings

Our video, The Stepping Up and Going Under Method is currently showing in the 10th International Istanbul Biennial (Sept 8 to Nov 4, 2007), as a part of the Nightcomers exhibition.

For the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, five curators from Turkey have been invited to select over 150 short video works from an open-call to the public. During the nights, the program, under the title of "Nightcomers," will be projected in public spaces in different parts of the city, from the centre to the periphery. The Dutch artists couple Bik Van der Pol have researched and selected about 25 spots and have designed the mobile projection device.

For the first time in the history of İstanbul Biennial, a real open participation of the public has been made possible so that thousands of people living in areas without access to "high culture" can have direct contact with contemporary art. Or, contemporary art is brought to the frontier of a true public gaze.

Remaining Screening Dates and Locations:
Oct 18: Tugay Yolu Caddesi, Maltepe
Oct 21: Mecidiyeköy, Şişli (Otobüs duraklarının arkası)
Oct 23: E5 Tem Okmeydanı Bağlantı Yolu ile Kağıthane Caddesi’nin Kesişimi, Köprü Ayağı, Kağıthane
Oct 25: İtfaiye Caddesi, Zeyrek, Fatih
Oct 27: Kısıklı Caddesi, Altunizade, Üsküdar
Oct 30: Kanlıca Hisarı Caddesi, Kanlıca, Beykoz
Nov 02: Karamük Çayevi, Asmalımescit, İstiklal Caddesi, Beyoğlu

Related: Release01's Report; Art News Blog; and Saatchi Gallery's Blog

Dallas Video Festival, Saturday, Aug. 4

Our video, The Stepping Up and Going Under Method, will be showing in the closing night of the 20th Annual Dallas Video Festival tomorrow, Saturday, Aug. 4 at 8:45 at the Dallas Theater Center. It looks like a great line-up: we are just three shorts after a Miranda July.

Here is the schedule for tomorrow, which includes our film at 8:45pm. Incidentally, tonight they're showing The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, an excellent film that a couple of our new Greek friends introduced us to last weekend. Brilliant, funny and philosophical, the PGTC will make you think of Hitchcock in a whole new light. One snippet: the most frightening thing in cinema is not death, but the inanimate undead object, or that which cannot die, yet does not live.

You can buy tickets to the festival here, but if you're not able to make it to the screening, the ever-innovative DVF is simultaneously hosting the film festival on Second Life for one week in conjunction with the live events. Here's what you need to know and here's where you need to go.

Idaho: SUGU Process

And finally, here is the collage from The Stepping Up and Going Under Method (SUGU) at the Friesen galleries (that opened last weekend).

Opening in Idaho on Feb. 5

We're going to Boise this week to install a show that opens next Tuesday. The exhibition at NNU will feature two video and audio pieces, Sea Shovel and The Stepping Up and Going Under Method, along with a large-scale wall collage of the process documentation exploring the making of each video. The collage will span the range from step-by-step photos of the building of each of the video's sets to writings addressing the metaphorical underpinnings of the work.

Sea Shovel is a video in which a man carrying a shovel pulls a ship behind him; he is oblivious to his burden. On the ship are two groups of characters: the sleepers and the workers. As the ship moves along, the workers dump barrels of trash over the side while three soldiers follow behind, sweeping up in trash that scatters in the ship’s wake. The soundtrack of rustling trash mimics the sound of a boat out at sea.

In The Stepping Up and Going Under Method, a boat traveling along a metal track carries two characters: a woman crouched at the prow like a figurehead, and the mariner who guides the boat down the track. As the boat approaches an obstacle blocking its path, the travelers must make a choice: what will they do with the obstacle in front of them? The soundtrack is derived from a NASA recording of a rocket booster disengaging in space, re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and crashing into the ocean.

SUGU: Final Set and Lighting

Here are images from the set of The Stepping Up and Going Under Method we finished filming Sunday. The images show the key points, from the camera viewpoint traveling down the conveyor. Each box was hand-placed to not look hand-placed.

Starting Over is Hard to Do

the crank

One of the hardest things is to realize when something is not working, and to take the necessary time and energy to find a better solution. Oh, how painful it is to interrupt the momentum of a work flow and take a time-out. But ultimately, how much better to solve the problem for good instead of limping by with half-measures and then suffering the consequences later.

We had a video shoot yesterday. It involved Murray sitting on a cart while holding the video camera and rolling down the conveyer belt. Since he was holding the camera, he couldn't manually brake the cart with his hands, and without brakes, the cart would shoot down the track at an uncontrollable speed. After a ridiculous amount of brainstorming, we came up with a plan: we would build a crank, attach aircraft wire to the cart via a pulley, and a production assistant would lower Murray and the camera down the track, spelunker-style.

In the days leading up to the shoot, we spent significant time on the problem, between ideas, sketches, trial runs, and the construction of the crank. Come shoot time, the cast and crew was in place. Everything was working successfully, except the crank system. The PA managing the crank was viewing a video monitor that beamed the image wirelessly from Murray's video cart. In theory, it should have worked. In reality, without being able to directly see Murray or the track — which had too many variables to accurately predict through the video monitor system — we'd given the PA an impossible job. So Murray would lurch forward, then jerk to a complete stop, then crawl along at the perfect speed, only to lurch forward again.

It was a three-hour shoot, and one hour into our allotted time, it was clear that the crank system just wasn't working. We gave performers a break while we tried to come up with a better solution that we could implement in record time. What a relief when we hit on a idea that hadn't occurred to us before.

Here's what we did: we disconnected the crank and built a new cart, then attached Murray's cart to the second cart with a cord, and reassigned our PA as the new "caboose." We had him travel behind Murray and brake both carts, now that he was able to see exactly what needed to happen and when. With the right tools, our PA was able to sensitively pilot the camera cart with the right timing and speed, which resulted in a fluid long shot (thanks, Camillo!). When we reconvened again, the cast and crew was transformed into a well-oiled machine, and we got 32 usable takes in the can.

Speaking of starting over: the video we're working on? It's a re-shoot of The Stepping Up and Going Under Method. We've got this great new camera, and the set was still up in our studio, so we decided to get a higher image quality on the video while we still could. In the process of preparing to shoot the new version, we solved several of the problems that had plagued us in the first shoot and re-worked the set. A painful process, but worth the effort.

Here's an image of the final set:

Wall of Boxes

What do you do when you've got a great cardboard connection? Mark the perimeter of your in-house conveyer belt with a wall of boxes, that's what. It's part of the set for a video shoot we're doing on Sunday.

On a side note, the studio is pretty cold these days — today it's 16 degrees, but feels like 4 with the windchill. So, yes, Chris, it's only December and I'm already eating my words: I am indeed missing Los Angeles. I could really go for a little Dim Sum followed by a walk on the beach right about now.

Installing Intersections

For the last two days we've been in Austin "installing" The Stepping Up and Going Under Method for the Intersections show that is opening today at the Creative Research Lab. The picture above shows Murray (middle) talking to Meggie Chou (on ladder) in front of her new installation, Incubation Machine 2.2.

Our installation for this show is minimal: two videos on two monitors. We're simultaneously loving the easy installation process (load dvd, adjust monitor, repeat) and missing the visual impact of an installation — which the other three artists are working on, probably even now, 8 hours before the opening.

Murray is having some guilt about this and is taking an unusually long time calibrating those monitors and setting the volume.

Titling Works of Art

The title of our work opening this Saturday in Austin is The Stepping Up and Going Under Method. Sometimes a title for a work comes naturally, but usually for us it's a long process. We've been going back and forth for weeks, trying to find a title that sheds light on the piece, while not showing our conceptual hand and not adding new content.

We've got a list of potential names that ranges from the ridiculously obtuse and academic (The Trefoil Knot Crossing Method), to the simplistic and obvious (The Two-Track Method). The name we finally settled on refers to action that takes place in the video, but is malleable enough to stretch into new, more ephemeral meanings. Each character is going up. Each character could be going under.

This name references our earlier work, The Grasp Hand and Walking Method. That name came from the first line of text in the video — a direct quote from a WWII vet talking about his experience as a Marine landing on Iwo Jima: "Hold hands and walk that way" — translated into Japanese, and then translated back into English.

We love the poetry of the awkward grammar of the translation, and have been struck with the idea that coping with such small moments in human experience could be defined as a method. That perhaps if we could find a handbook that exposed the rules for handling any life event, it would be filled with chapters like The Grasp Hand and Walking Method, and The Stepping Up and Going Under Method.

Incidentally, if you apply the same translation process to this title, it becomes: It Improves, Go.

Intersections Opens Sat, Nov 4

We're heading down to Austin, TX this weekend for the opening of Intersections at Creative Research Laboratory. If you're in the area, please stop by. The show runs through Dec 2. If you can't make it out to see the show, you can check out the podcast interviews of the artists that will be online after the opening.

We were interviewed by the director of CRL, Jade Walker, and Katja Rivera, an art historian, last week via iChat audio conferencing. It was an odd experience to wear headphones and answer questions about our art practice and the genesis of our collaboration into our laptop at the dining room table at home, but it was great fun. If you listen closely, you might hear our dog scampering in the background. He was playing with his chew toy pretty enthusiastically over the course of the interview.

We'll link to the podcast when it's online. More info about the exhibit here.